Where is the Jonathan one-term pact?

The 2015 presidential race has begun. Those interested in the election and their backers have launched a battle for the diadem. The presidency is a coveted job. As the highest office in the land, it requires those who believe in themselves to step forward for the plum job. It goes without saying, therefore, that only one person can occupy the office at a time. But in a society riven by religious and ethnic strife, whatever we do is always determined by where we come from and the faith that we profess. It is even worse in the matter of who becomes president.

The battle for the presidency is usually a do-or- die between the North and the South. For years, the North colonised the presidency. The region held the reins of power for years, leaving the South with what its people believed to be sinecure positions. The South complained for years about a power structure, which seemed to have turned its people to second class citizens in their own country, but its cry went unheard.

To keep the South perpetually away from presidential power, the North resorted to chicanery and if you like, bribery. During an election, rather than back its own, the South (or should I say some people from the region) is always ready to go with the North once the price is right. And what is this price? It could be either juicy political posts; contracts or cash.

This is the trick the North has deployed for years to keep the South on the lower rungs of the political ladder. But since there is a time for everything, the tide turned in the South’s favour in 1993. Despite running on a Muslim-Muslim ticket, the late newspaper mogul Moshood Abiola won the June 12, 1993 presidential election, but the Gen Ibrahim Babangida (read as the North) regime annulled the poll, throwing the country into turmoil for years.

Long after his exit from power in August of that same year, Nigeria remained in crisis until June 1998 when former Head of State Gen Sani Abacha died in his fortress in Aso Rock. Unfortunately, Abiola died the following month in detention.

Abiola fought to reclaim his mandate but the late Abacha got him arrested and kept him in solitary confinement for years. Rather than back Abiola, his kinsman, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who later benefited from the late business man’s travails, said the deceased was not the messiah that Nigeria needed. That is the South for you. Obasanjo never told us, but I believe he later saw himself as that messiah when he became president in 1999. The current problem between the North and the South over the 2015 presidency can be located in the 1999 arrangement that brought Obasanjo to office.

The North, it was said, backed him then on the condition that he would serve one term; he did two and was even ready for a third term if the National Assembly had not scuttled his ambition with the rejection of his tenure elongation bid which wars disguised as a Constitution Amendment Bill. Today, President Goodluck Jonathan is toeing that path by purportedly reneging on an agreement to do only one term. Did the president enter into such agreement? Was it a verbal or written pact? Those who should know say that it was written. If this is so, where is the agreement? Who are the signatories? Those who have the document will be doing us a world of good if they can release it for public consumption. The release of the document will lay to rest all this hue and cry over an issue which does not warrant the drawing out of our swords.

Anyway, why will

someone like Niger

State Governor Babangida Aliyu say that there is such a pact if none exists? Why will a senior citizen like Chief Edwin Clark deny the existence of such a pact if really there is one? Why can’t the presidency come clean with us on the matter by telling us if the president signed such a pact or not? The answer to the issue is not to dismiss it offhandedly by saying that the talk of a pact is to distract the president. What is distracting in that? The question needs a simple yes or no answer. Yes, I signed the pact; or no, I didn’t sign the pact. Chikena

Alleging that there is a pact in a radio interview, Aliyu said: “I recall that at the time he (Jonathan) was going to declare for the 2011 election, all the PDP governors were brought together to ensure that we were all in the same frame of mind. And I recall that some of us said given the circumstances of the death of President Umaru Yar’ Adua and given the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) zoning arrangement, it was expected that the North was to produce the president for a number of years. I recall at that discussion, it was agreed that Jonathan would serve only one term of four years and we all signed the agreement. Even when Jonathan went to Kampala in Uganda, he also said he was going to serve a single term’’

In denying the existence of such a pact, Clark, who accused Aliyu of lying, said: ‘’It is unfortunate and disappointing that you could engage in such bare-faced lies and false propaganda simply because of your inordinate ambition to seek election as president come 2015, and the only qualification you think you have over the incumbent is that you are a Northerner who must rule at all times. As a rebuttal to your statement, I wish to repeat that there was no agreement between the governors of the 19 Northern states and President Jonathan. You are a very well educated person, but it appears you do not understand the correct meaning of agreement”

But a Northern leader, Dr Junaid Muhammed, insists that the pact exists. He claimed to have “sighted” a copy of the agreement with a friend. Can he do the nation a favour by getting us this copy from his friend so that we can end this drama of a pact or no pact? Many will be willing to part with millions of naira to get this ‘pact’ and many will also be willing to double that to ensure the ‘pact’ remains hidden. Dr Muhammed seems to have the ace. Will he get the pact for us?

No Lawal, Don’t expect Dr Junaid Muhammed to produced the pact for us because they operates in secrecy like cultists. But unlike spiritual cults, the Nigerian leadership class attempts to manipulate the civil populace over their satanic nocturnal bonds. By the way why is it that it is only southerners running for presidency that are asked to swear oat of one term only. Why was Ya’Adua and Shagari not made to sign for one term only. I imagine what other ordeal the north must have forced on Southerner aspirants befor “allowing them” the juicy position.